Maxime Berthou, Mark Požlep
Hogshead 733

Mark Požlep works in the visual and performative arts, with spatial installations and video art. His artistic practice involves journey-travels, which function both as extended duration performance/endurance art and as art pieces in themselves. It is an intense procedural exploration that aims to reveal the tension between politics, poetics, and individual action.

Maxime Berthou’s artistic practice consists of making cinematographic essays based on his knowledge and experience of performative gestures. His work is part of a practice-based research context that superimposes an artistic framework on a scientific framework.

Hogshead 733 (2015–2020) is a joint art project by Berthou and Požlep that consists of a journey, an adventure on the sea, a story of heritage, friendship, and whiskey. The process follows the restoration of a typical 1941 wooden fishing boat, her last 733-mile sailing journey, and the final transformation of the boat, soaked with sea water and adventure, into two whisky barrels. Every specially chosen stage offers an opportunity to research the poetics of a specific practice of expert manual labour: boat building, sailing, barrel-making, and whisky production.

A journey from Trebeurden Brittany to the Scottish island of Islay was undertaken from 23 August through 21 September 2015 with 20 stops en route. The project concluded in November 2020 with a cinematographic essay Soutien de famille, which will premiere at the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova.

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Maxime Berthou (1981, France) graduated from the Ecole Supérieure d'Art d'Aix-en-Provence before joining the postgraduate program at Fresnoy Studio National des Arts Contemporain in Tourcoing, after which he followed with pre-doctoral training at the Ecole Supérieure de Arts Décoratifs of Paris.

Mark Požlep (1981, Slovenia) finished his BA and MA at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana, and completed an Advanced Master’s Degree in Transmedia at the Sint-Lukas Campus in Brussels and HISK in Ghent.

Exhibition curator: Igor Španjol